It is a remarkable proof of his selfknowledge that, from the moment at which he began to distinguish himself in public life, he ceased to be a versifier.  It does not appear that, after he became a Lord of the Treasury, he ever wrote a couplet, with the exception of a few well turned lines inscribed on a set of toasting glasses which were sacred to the most renowned Whig beauties of his time.  He wisely determined to derive from the poetry of others a glory which he never would have derived from his own.  As a patron of genius and learning he ranks with his two illustrious friends, Dorset and Somers.  His munificence fully equalled theirs; and, though he was inferior to them in delicacy of taste, he succeeded in associating his name inseparably with some names which will last as long as our language.

Yet it must be acknowledged that Montague, with admirable parts and with many claims on the gratitude of his country, had great faults, and unhappily faults not of the noblest kind.  His head was not strong enough to bear without giddiness the speed of his ascent and the height of his position.  He became offensively arrogant and vain.  He was too often cold to his old friends, and ostentatious in displaying his new riches.  Above all, he was insatiably greedy of praise, and liked it best when it was of the coarsest and rankest quality.  But, in 1693, these faults were less offensive than they became a few years later.

With Russell, Somers and Montague, was closely connected, during a quarter of a century a fourth Whig, who in character bore little resemblance to any of them.  This was Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord Wharton.  Thomas Wharton has been repeatedly mentioned in the course of this narrative.  But it is now time to describe him more fully.  He was in his forty-seventh year, but was still a young man in constitution, in appearance and in manners.  Those who hated him most heartily,—­and no man was hated more heartily,—­admitted that his natural parts were excellent, and that he was equally qualified for debate and for action.  The history of his mind deserves notice; for it was the history of many thousands of minds.  His rank and abilities made him so conspicuous that in him we are able to trace distinctly the origin and progress of a moral taint which was epidemic among his contemporaries.

He was born in the days of the Covenant, and was the heir of a covenanted house.  His father was renowned as a distributor of Calvinistic tracts, and a patron of Calvinistic divines.  The boy’s first years were past amidst Geneva bands, heads of lank hair, upturned eyes, nasal psalmody, and sermons three hours long.  Plays and poems, hunting and dancing, were proscribed by the austere discipline of his saintly family.  The fruits of this education became visible, when, from the sullen mansion of Puritan parents, the hotblooded, quickwitted young patrician emerged into the gay and voluptuous London of the Restoration.